Decorative items, such as jewelry, pins, brooches and the like are well known. Individuals wear jewelry on different parts of their body or clothing primarily to enhance their overall outward appearance. For example, women often wear a necklace around their neck or a bracelet around their wrist. The necklace is typically worn for decorative purposes, to add to the attractiveness of the wearer to observers. Other forms of jewelry are used as accessories to make a particular article of clothing more attractive.
Women are also known to use enhancers as decorative fashion accessories for necklaces. Enhancers are relatively small, discrete pieces of decorative jewelry that are either locked or slid onto a specific central position of the necklace. Enhancers are typically manufactured to attach to a specific necklace using prior art clamps or fasteners. However, the size, shape and dimensions of prior art fasteners prevent enhancers from being used with different types of necklaces or positioned other than in the center. As a result, enhancers manufactured in accordance with prior art standards give women little, if any, option to use the enhancer with other forms of jewelry or necklaces.
Decorative cables for necklaces are used in the jewelry industry in place of enhancers. Decorative cables typically include a male/female snap-together-end, in which a pendant is designed to snap onto the decorative cable. The cable, in turn, is designed to attach to the center of the necklace. Once the decorative cable is attached, it cannot be moved or relocated from the center position. As a result, the snap-together cable design suffers from the same limitations or restrictions as enhancers, in that the cable/pendant can be only attached to one center position on the necklace. The lack of freedom in positioning the cable/pendant on the necklace limits the user's ability to control how the necklace and cable/pendant combination is worn. In a word, most prior art jewelry, such as enhancers or decorative cable/pendant combinations, are not adapted to be interchanged with or attached to different types jewelry.
As another example, decorative items that include pins as fasteners are ill-suited to attach to jewelry. For instance, a decorative item, such as a brooch, typically includes a decorative portion that is attached in some form to a pin. Most prior art pins are not manufactured or designed to engage odd-shaped, relatively hard surfaces, which is present in most forms of jewelry. When a user attempts to maneuver the pin to attach a piece of jewelry to a string of pearls, the needle will either bend, break, or dislodge itself from the hinge or catch, thereby permanently damaging the pin and, in some cases, the string of pearls. The individual pearls are either too hard for a pin to pierce or wrap around to engage the catch. Also, using the pin on other pieces of jewelry, such as a chocker, can result in piercing the wearer's skin because the sharp needle end of the pin will remain exposed and close to the user's body. Furthermore, pins are known to damage clothing by creating small holes in the fabric. These small holes can become unsightly and ruin an article of clothing.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an attachment device for an ornamental/decorative item, which can be maneuvered to attach to a variety articles and contact surfaces. It is also an object of the present invention to provide an attachment device for an ornamental item that can be attached to an article a different positions desired by the user. It is a further object of the present invention to provide a clip for an ornamental item that is easy to use and is relatively inexpensive to manufacture. In addition, it is an object of the present invention to provide an ornamental clip that can be worn as a fashion accessory on articles, such as pearls, beads, scarves, handbags, jewelry and the like.